


One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night

by Davechicken



Series: Dead Men [1]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: 2x06, Angst, Dead Man Walking, Episode Tag, Fix-It-Fic, M/M, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:02:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode tag to 2x06. Miles has his reasons. </p>
<p>Thank you to: Hithelleth, megmistresses, swietlik for kind help with transcripting. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>One fine day in the middle of the night / Two dead men got up to fight / Back to back they faced each other / drew their swords and shot each other...</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night

I have pointed a pistol at Sebastian Monroe's head and cocked it, chambering the round, safety off, bullet ready to sing through the air and impact with bone and brain and flower out over the pale cotton pillow below. I have held my sword against his - close to his swallowing throat - pushing and straining and trying to break through his guard. One slip and it would cleave through the sensitive, thin skin, the arteries and the ripcord tendons and gush blood like a red waterfall that would cover us both in the guilt. I have levelled a rifle - the butt pressed into my shoulder and the coiled potential growling like a tiger in my hands - stared down the sights and seen him dead on the other end. I have raised a weapon that hummed and sang and promised ozone and destruction and worked in ways I could never comprehend. It was heavy and it made my arms ache and it had - as ever - a sibling in the other man's hands. An echo. A mirror. I have pressed a knife close - the dull metal reflecting nothing but the blackness inside me in the muted light of a Militia tent - and all Sebastian Monroe did was tilt his head up and look at me.

I could have killed him a hundred times over. I _should_ have, I have told myself, a hundred-hundred times over. General Monroe - Sebastian Monroe - Bass - he was a monster. He was the devil incarnate. He was a mad dog burdened with grief and bloodlust, who would go for the hindlegs or the throat and bring down any prey he saw. Bring down _anything_ he saw. Bass was efficient in his killing, as was I. We had trained for it, bred for it... it was all we had known before the lights went out, and it made sense that it was what we carried on doing in the dark. Time had honed us both into weapons of mass destruction. We were responsible for more deaths once the lights failed than we ever had been before in the name of the United States Marine Corps. 

I should have killed him. I should have killed him because he was out of control. I should have killed him because of the countless children who grew up fatherless. No - worse - the mothers and fathers whose _children_ we stole. Our bloody reign had spared no one in the end. It had all started with good intentions. Who would stand up for the little guy without us there? Who would defend the weak and the innocent? It was dog-eat-dog and we'd gathered the lost little pups under our banner. But two men alone could not keep a tribe alive and we'd had to take on more and more wolves with a taste for blood. It escalated. It grew beyond survival and into something else.

Neither I nor Bass was ever a politician. We were soldiers. We killed. That was our job, and we were good at our job. But the man with the gun is the one you listen to when the going gets bad, and the man with the gun won't listen to anyone who might know better than he.

We'd meant so much good. We'd meant to fix things. We'd meant to make the world a safer place. We made the hard decisions because someone had to... _I_ had made them. Bass had been my voice of reason, calling me out. And I had done what it took to survive. I had executed 'criminals' with no trial. I had taken what we needed. I had made those hard decisions and let them weigh on my shoulders so that the weaker of us would live. 

You don't need a hero, in those circumstances. You can't judge that behaviour in the same way that you can judge someone who has enough food to eat and somewhere to sleep and medicine and law and order and all the other things. You can't nearly starve to death and still think 'stealing is wrong'. The urge - the drive - to keep breathing is stronger than anything else. The sound a child makes in distress is nothing compared to the look in his eyes when he's too weak to cry out.

Bass had been my counterpoint. He'd second-guessed everything. He'd told me when to stop. He'd argued with me late in the night until we were both blue in the face and then we'd done whatever we both agreed we had to. And with him as my counterpoint, I'd known it was okay.

I hadn't... I hadn't realised that eventually he would snap. He was always... he was always just _Bass_. Kind, good-hearted Bass. Bass who cared more than he should and pretended he didn't. Bass who I _know_ threw his whole life away for the woman I - we - left behind. He'd had a chance at something. He'd given it up for her, and for me. Bass. My precious Bass. Pain came faster to his face than it did mine.

And he did snap. One thing... one thing too much and...

And he became me. He wasn't Bass any more. He did the things that I thought needed doing before I'd even voiced them. He made those hard, cruel decisions that meant we would be safe. He got blood on his hands and he was magnificent. He was. He was a leader people could rally behind with those charismatic blue eyes, the way he would bound in and the energy and vigour would just bowl you over. 

I am a closed book, in comparison. I am slow to warm. Slower still to open up. Bass makes people fall in love with him, that's his gift. He makes people believe in him with the passion in his voice and the way he seems to just... get inside you... 

I lead by deed, action, rank, force.

Bass... _ruled_.

And to begin with it was fine. It was, truly. We got swept away in the victory. We bulldozed our way across the Eastern seaboard and flattened any competition and we put in place boundary lines and settled structures and order from the chaos. Men could live with their women and their children - for a small price of food or footwork - and it was all perfect. It wasn't the United States, but it worked.

If a niggling voice at the back of my head told me we were going too far, I could ignore it. 

I could.

I did.

I ignored it when I razed Baltimore to the ground. I ignored it when we realised we didn't have the infrastructure to keep prisoners of war. I ignored it when we tortured enemy spies for information. I ignored it when we could no longer get enough recruits and we had to drag people from their wives and their children and their beds. I ignored it when I made decisions that I thought needed making. I ignored it when I sent Alec to Texas. I ignored the blood on my hands and the weight on my soul.

But... I couldn't ignore it forever. I couldn't sideline the thoughts indefinitely. I would wake in the night, covered in cold sweat, listening to the screaming inside of my head. I would phase out in the middle of a briefing and imagine someone had come up behind the speaker and stabbed them from behind and instead of a mission report, blood bubbled up from their lips. I would stare at the meaningless lists of the dead and place the paper beside the current map of our territory and the unreality of the scribbled signs would make me light-headed. Each little square inch on the map? How many had died for it? I would work out numbers in my head (probably wrongly, math was not my strong point) and then I would nod and say 'good job' and 'dismissed' and then go back to staring at the paper.

I...

I... could never admit...

I could never say...

I could never tell him that I had been wrong. I could never tell Bass that I had misjudged. That he had been right. I couldn't even...

_"Don’t worry. Your son is fine."_

_"I’m sorry?"_

_"Yeah, I knew about him. Emma got word to me. And I hid him from you."_

_"You what?"_

_"You were off the rails, Bass."_

_"You… you knew…how I felt. I had a kid that died. And you hid the one that lived from me?"_

_"Nobody was safe around you, so I…"_

There he was. About to die. About to die because I couldn't spring him loose to carry on killing for me - doing the things I knew needed doing but somehow now could no longer do - his dying wish to _fucking see me_ \- me! The man who snuck into his room with a gun and tried to kill him. The man who set him up as Emperor of a Nation and then fled when the going got tough. The man who pushed and pushed at him until he broke and did everything I wanted of him... and who hated him for his loyalty, for his obedience, for becoming the perfect right hand... 

...Bass was going to die for a sin he'd not committed. Bass was going to be executed for a bomb he'd never dropped. He was going to die, and we both knew it. And what did he do? He asked for _me_. Not even to tell me he hated me. Not even to say he wished he'd stayed in Parris Island, where he should have. Not even to tell me that I was a dick for leaving the only man I'd ever loved. Not even...

...no. Bass. Oh, Bass. Bass who loved me when no one should. Bass who never once gave up on me, even when the whole world should have stoned me for my sins. I wanted him to hate me. I wanted him to hate me because everyone should hate me. I broke him. I broke my beautiful Bass. I broke the man who followed me even into Hell, and I was still there, still in the Pit. But it wasn't his Pit, and even though I'd told him it was... it wasn't.

I tried to get him to lash out at me. I tried so fucking hard. I tried to make him see. I pointed weapons at him. I hurled abuse at him. I threw everything I could at him, but it never made him love me less. I threatened to kill him. I called him a monster. I _told him we were not family_. 

And he never. Once. Stopped. Loving. Me.

Didn't he get it? Didn't he understand when you were supposed to break up? Didn't he know that when someone disowned you and told you that you were a deranged maniac that _you were supposed to say it back_?

So I said the last thing I could think of to hurt him.

I...

I hadn't kept the kid from him out of spite. I'd... not consciously... I'd... I'd wanted to... we were both so very, very fucked up, you see. He and I. Everything we touched ran red with blood. Everywhere we went. Even our love was nasty and violent and painful. 

I didn't do it to hurt him. Or - I hadn't thought I had - but when the words came out I shocked even me.

_You're not my family. I stole your son. You can't have a family. You have to be alone - forever._

And it did it. It finally did it. It broke him in a way I'd been trying for six years or more, now. I finally found the one thing he would not forgive me for, and I finally felt the full force of his rage.

And I ran.

I ran and left him screaming out his hatred of me and I ran back to the bottle like I always did. I ran and I drank and I felt no better because I'd thought if he hated me as much as I hated myself then I would finally be free. No one ever did. Not Charlie, not Rachel, not Ben, not Nora... _no one_ hated me like I did.

His words...

_"How could you do that, Miles? Why? You son of a bitch! How could you do that? Get back here! How could you do that to me?"_

They echoed in my head, over and over. How could you? How could you?

I did it because I needed to hear that snap in his voice. I needed him to finally be free of me. He'd idolised me far too long, even after I'd worked out I was a false idol at best with feet made of shit, not clay. I stank from the ground up. I reeked of death and selfishness and cruelty and sin. I wasn't worthy of the way he would look at me. I wasn't worthy of the way he would do whatever I wanted, whatever I _needed_ , but wouldn't ask for.

Like the strikes against families. Maybe I wouldn't have done them, but Bass thought it _needed_ doing. Like the bomb he tried to use on Atlanta (tried and failed, so his execution was for a plot he didn't succeed in, but the motive and the will had still been there). Everything he had done, he had done for me. I'd known before he screamed it at me. I'd known because I'd seen it.

I didn't want it. Not any more.

And I didn't have the fucking balls to tell him to his face.

I drank. I drank and drank. I drank until my throat burned and my hand shook on the glass. They were going to kill him and I couldn't go. I couldn't let him see me. I couldn't let him see my face in case he still - still! - loved me. I couldn't let the man know I loved him too. That this was all my fault. That it should be me in that chair because I'd taken him and I'd broken him and then I'd left him broken and I'd not gone back.

The little voice that had cried out in pain - that had caused me to run away from it all - I heard it again, now. I heard it telling me how ridiculous I was being. How I was the least emotionally adjusted person since... fuck. I don't even know. How I was ruining my best friend's life and sending him to the grave alone, afraid and hurt... because I didn't have the balls - had never had the balls - to tell him I wanted him to stop.

The voice in my head...

...it was Bass. 

It had been Bass all along.

I took up the glass and I smashed it against the wall. 

Someone came close and I punched them.

I don't know... I don't remember... I just know the next thing was a fury of fists and teeth and glass and blood and bones and broken tables and then I ran screaming out into the night and I didn't stop running until the crying hurt me so much I couldn't breathe. I collapsed down onto my knees and I shouted myself hoarse at the sky.

Forgive me. Forgive me! It was all a mistake. It was all a mistake. I broke you, Bass. I ruined you. You loved me and you trusted me and I bent you out of shape and I never had the guts to tell you it was all me. You were the one to say no. You were the one to say stop. You were the one I should have listened to, and when you needed me to be there for you I failed you. I failed you and then I hated you for my own sins. And I left you to rot, and I left you to die and I made you hate me because I couldn't tell you I was wrong.

I screamed and I cried and I didn't stop until all the words were out and the only witnesses to my shouting were the stars and the creatures of the night who gave me a wide berth and left me to my misery.

I collapsed and waited - like a fucking drama queen that I am - and I waited and wondered if I would just die here? It would be a mercy. All those times I'd tried to kill Bass and I never once admitted to either of us that what I really wanted was for _him_ to kill _me_. Because we were bound together through more than just the years. He had become a dark version of me, but I had never been strong enough to be the light version of him. He'd had the balls to tell me 'no', and then he'd had the balls to say 'yes', and all I'd ever done was kill and then run and hide because I wasn't capable of the compassion and the kindness I'd once seen in his face.

Bass was dead. Bass was dead and it should have been over. It would never be over. It could never be over. Bass was dead.

Charlie found me. I don't know how or why - no. I do. The kid is too kind for her own good. She's... she reminds... she reminds me of how Bass used to be. I turned her dark and nasty, too, but I'd tried harder this time around not to ruin the bright core of her. I'd tried to shelter her. I'd tried to make _her_ hate me, too. But she hadn't. And she must have followed the trail of destruction and broken noses I'd left - the swathes of broken crops - to find me passed out and still mostly drunk and cold and shivering and wishing I was dead.

"Fuck off."

"Miles... get up."

"I told you to fuck off, Charlie."

She ignored me - like she always did - and dropped down. She pulled the (mostly empty) bottle from my hands and I resisted as long as I damn well could but eventually she won. The light hurt my eyes. My eyes hurt my eyes. Everything hurt. I was cold and sore and stiff.

"You need to come with me. You're going to catch a chill, and then Gene will have to fix you."

"I'd rather die," I said, and I meant it.

"Can you at least die in the house?"

It was not a battle I was going to win, and I was soul-sore and exhausted. 

"Fine."

I admitted defeat and allowed her to push under my arm and drag me up. I'm not as young as I was and lying in a field all night was one of my not-so-best ideas. 

Bass was dead. Everything seemed... dull. Bass was dead and someone else had done it. Something I swore I'd never allow. Something I swore was sacrosanct - his life was _mine_ and mine alone - but someone else had done the thing I couldn't. And now I had to live with it in whatever way I could as I slowly killed myself the coward's way or picked a fight I couldn't win or found some other way to spend myself and end the cycle of violence I'd begun nearly sixteen years ago.

She dragged me into the house and Rachel shoved hot coffee in my hands. I drank it without feeling it hurt on the way down and I staggered towards the room they sometimes let me sleep in, planning on staying in bed for at least a year or until I had to move in case I pissed myself.

...and Bass was on the bed.

I had to grab the chair so as not to fall over.

Why the fuck had they...?

Then I saw the tiny rise and fall of his chest and I spun around to stare at my sister-in-law, furious. "What the hell, Rachel?"

"They think he's dead," she said. "They think we killed him. He can't stay long. He should come round soon. No one will question it if you leave."

If... if I left?

Even now, they realised... even now. After all I'd done to him. All I'd said. All the pain I had put him through.

We could never be apart. We were brothers. We were more than brothers. He was my Bass, and I was his Miles. And no matter how hard I'd tried to ruin that - no matter how I'd tried to kill him, to run away, to push him away - it had never, ever worked.

I should have listened to him.

I should have stopped.

I should have been there for him, when he'd needed me to be the strong one.

Wisely the others melted back and left me with him.

He was peaceful, on the bed. His eyes flickered under his lids and I wondered what he dreamt of. I wondered if the place he was now was happier. Surely anything had to be happier than this?

I went to the side of the bed and I took his hand in mine. There was a chair, so I sat.

It took a long time for him to stir. It took a long time for those blue eyes to recover from death.

When they did, I was the first thing he saw.

"Miles?"

"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it. "I'm sorry for everything."

I should have said more. I should have explained everything to him. I should have told him I loved him and that I was wrong. I should have.

I didn't. I pulled him up into my arms and I held him and we cried for all the days we'd spent apart.

Bass would always love me.

And I would always love him back.

**Author's Note:**

> Art by the far-too talented [swietlik](http://swietlik.tumblr.com/).


End file.
